Let's say you want to build up the strength and size of
your quadriceps. Depending on what training school you belong to,
you could do leg extensions that isolate the movement at your knee
joint; you could perform leg presses that also involve movement at
the ankle and hip; or you could perform front squats that add in
the low back, along with abdominal and upper back components.

If I didn't give you any additional info, which choice
makes the most sense?

Sure, the front squats.

Because God Said So

No matter how hard you try, you can't perform an isolated
movement in the real world. The reason is because your body is
designed to work as a system of integrated parts. Reach out for a
cup of coffee at the kitchen table and you're recruiting
muscles at the shoulder, elbow, and wrist joints.

When training with free weights, it's difficult too, even
if you're trying to isolate. Perform a standing front
raise with dumbbells for your anterior deltoids. The first muscles
that fire are your calves, followed by your posterior chain and
abdominals. After that, your deltoids fire to lift the load.

With the help of machines you can be pretty damn effective at
isolating muscle groups. Take the one-arm dumbbell preacher curl,
for example. This is about as isolated as it gets for the biceps.
The movement is isolated to your elbow joint. And since you can
rest your upper arms, your traps aren't activated. Neither are
your upper back muscles activated.

About as isolated as it gets.

Show me one elbow flexion movement in the real world, though,
that doesn't involve your traps. For that matter, show me one
that doesn't involve the upper back to any degree,
either. You might come up with one or two that don't
involve the upper back, but there aren't many.

My point is that the traps and upper back are designed to work
with your biceps. Taken a step further, I think it's useless
to train the biceps unless you're also working your traps and
upper back.

Parting of Ways

And this, my friends, is where the parties split. The isolation
camp usually favors isolating the biceps, traps, and upper back.
The compound camp favors pulling exercises for the biceps, along
with exercises that also involve the traps (such as standing
barbell curls). So we're not dealing with an argument over
whether or not a standing barbell curl is useless. Of course
it's not. Both camps would agree.

What we are dealing with is the question of whether an exercise
such as a one-arm dumbbell preacher curl is an intelligent exercise
choice.

In my business, the answer is simple: since the biceps are
designed to work with the traps and upper back, I won't use
any exercise that doesn't also activate at least one of those
two muscle groups. Sure, you could isolate the biceps, traps, and
upper back with three different movements, but why? The body
isn't designed to work that way and it's inefficient from
a time-management perspective.

I'm only using the biceps example because it's easy to
visualize. The important point is that your exercise selections
should be based on the integrated function of your body. However,
you won't need to read through countless anatomy books and
references since I'm going to break it down for
you.

Before I move on, I have to lay to rest the misconception that
you need to isolate key muscle groups so they'll grow and give
you more "separation and definition" in that area. The
abdominal region is a perfect example. My position is that you
don't need to perform any "isolation" exercises for
the abdominal region if you perform front squats, overhead lifts,
deadlifts, and one-arm overhead presses. A few sets of reverse
crunches or the ab wheel aren't going to hurt anything, but
they're just not necessary for the vast majority.

It's been purported that you need direct abdominal
exercises (crunches, twists, etc.) because you won't have
muscle separation and definition in your midsection without them
– even when your body fat is low. The proof, they say, is
with marathon runners who have no significant abdominal separation
even though their body fat might be as low as 6%.

That's an insanely stupid argument. Why? Because skinny
marathon runners aren't doing heavy front squats, deadlifts,
and overhead presses! You'd see some awesome abdominal
development if the marathon runners in question would start doing
those exercises. I always witness this effect whenever I put a
former long distance runner on a muscle- building program replete
with compound exercises.

You don't need isolation exercises for your midsection,
period.

Okay, I feel better now. Let's move on.

Shaping a Muscle

You can't change the shape of a muscle.

It will grow, shrink or stay the same. You could do curls with
your elbows tucked to your sides and a wide hand position until the
cows come home and it won't do jack shit for the inner head of
your biceps.

The reason? Because you can't fire the inner head without
the outer head. Furthermore, show me one bodybuilder who got
visible results with such unorthodox curls. In other words,
targeting certain areas of your biceps looks great on paper, but it
never pans out in the real world.

I do get a kick out of hearing the proponents of the curling
variations with different arm and hand positions, though. Usually
it goes something like this, "Most people perform curls with
poor form (flared elbows) and their inner head gets
neglected." Therefore they recommend targeting that lagging
inner head by curling with your elbows in and hands
wide.

Here's an idea: why don't you just start curling with
better form?

Can you reshape a muscle? No. Can you train key muscles in a
group to grow? No, unless it's the quadriceps. Since the quads
are such a massive muscle group with four primary heads, and since
each head is favored at certain knee angles, a little tweaking is
possible.

For example, hack squats will build up your lateral thigh
(vastus lateralis) because the movement overloads the vastus
lateralis at knee angles greater than 90 degrees. The full,
ass-to-grass front squat will build up your medial thigh (vastus
medialis) because it overloads the vastus medialis at knee angles
less than 90 degrees. But this is limited to the quadriceps.
Indeed, it's the only muscle group that has the capacity to be
fine-tuned.

It's true, if you think about it. How many times have you
been in an argument where the naysayer in question referenced the
quads as proof that you can reshape a muscle? A lot, I bet. How
many times have you heard this same argument with the calves,
biceps, glutes, or lats as proof?

Compounds In Rehab

You've probably already guessed that I'm a huge
proponent of compound exercises over isolation exercises. Up until
a few years ago, though, my position wasn't as extreme as it
is now. That's probably because I used to perform many
isolation exercises with my clients that needed physical
rehabilitation.

One good example is the rotator cuff. If my client had a weak
rotator cuff, I'd perform external rotation exercises with the
upper arm resting on his knee. This insured that he could really
"focus" on the external rotators because I didn't
want any other muscles interfering with the movement. The results
were fair.

Then I got into physical therapy research. (Luckily, I have
friends like Bill Hartman, who helped hasten my way to the best of
it.) With regard to the shoulder, it's been demonstrated that
there's a strong link between shoulder instability on one side
(right) and hip weakness on the other (left).

So now, all of my clients train their rotator cuff
simultaneously with their opposite hip for at least one exercise.
An example is the PNF diagonal with lunge as depicted in Hartman
and Robertson's outstanding Inside/Out DVD.
(Basically, this movement is a lunge with internal rotation,
externally rotating as you return to the starting position).

They also train their external rotators with face pulls, but
once again, it's a compound movement, not a crappy shoulder
horn variation.

The same is true with virtually any other rehabilitation
exercise I prescribe. Whether it's for the serratus anterior,
gluteus medius, etc., my clients perform exercises that also engage
the supporting muscle groups. There are some circumstances (as with
lower traps) when it's difficult to train them effectively
with compound movements, but for most muscle groups, it's not
a problem at all.

Compounds Can Do It All

But this article isn't about physical therapy, per se.
It's about building your size and strength as efficiently as
possible. I can sympathize and empathize with those who want to
build up a specific muscle group. There's nothing vain about
wanting bigger muscles. But I hope you want those muscles to be
able to perform well, too.

So here's an extensive list of exercises that will build up
key muscles. The key muscles, of course, will be working with all
of the other muscles that support their function. As you'll
see, this isn't the usual "do squats for your
thighs." I get very specific. The following movements are for
bodybuilding purposes, physical rehabilitation is another article
altogether.

I have a lot of reasons for breaking down for correlating
specific exercises with target muscle groups, even if intuitively
it doesn't make sense. First, if you need to bring up a
lagging muscle group, you need an effective list of exercises to
choose from.

No need to do leg extensions for your medial quadriceps when a
full front squat, single leg squat, or high box step up will build
those muscles more quickly (along with developing healthier joints.

Second, it puts to rest many common misconceptions. For example,
the good morning is a great exercise but it's not a great
glute builder. The reason is because you can't fully lock out
your hips at the top of the movement (the portion that emphasizes
the glutes) without falling backwards.

Third, you'll develop much better structural balance and
joint health if you stick to the recommended exercises. For
example, I didn't mention the bench press for chest
development. Is that because it's not a good chest builder? Of
course not. It's because you typically can't get enough
movement from the scapulae when you're doing it, and that
makes it detrimental to shoulder health in the long
run.

Focus on the push-up and the dip instead (make sure you
"push" yourself as high as possible with the dip to
activate your serratus anterior).

Again, this is not an exhaustive list to target every muscle in
the body. I focused on the muscles that bodybuilders typically want
to build for a more aesthetically balanced physique.

Final Statement

If you want to isolate muscle groups with machines, be my guest.
But first ask yourself, "Is this how my body is designed to
work?" If it's not, your strength and size results will
always suffer.

Now you have the tools to revolt against any puny-ass isolation
exercises!